Like us on Facebook and follow us on twitter




Executions

There were no executions in the past week.





Scheduled Executions


Ronnie Threadgill - Texas Execution - April 16, 2013




Judge John Jackson on Monday set April 16, 2013, as the date Ronnie Paul Threadgill will be executed for murder.

Threadgill, 38, who was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder of a 17-year-old outside a Navarro County nightclub, sat quietly in the 13th District Courtroom Monday to hear his execution date in a brief, 10-minute hearing.

Navarro County District Attorney R. Lowell Thompson said Threadgill made no statement to the court during the hearing, answering “No” when asked by Jackson if he had any statement.

Threadgill was convicted of firing two shots into a car on the night of April 14, 2001, hitting Dexter McDonald, a 17-year-old sitting in the back seat of the car. After shooting McDonald, Threadgill jumped into the car and drove away, stopping nearby just long enough to drag McDonald out onto the ground and leave him there. McDonald died later of a gunshot wound to the chest.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme court decided it would not review the case, upholding a Fifth Circuit Appeals Court ruling.

Threadgill’s appeal stemmed from the possibility that his lawyer’s didn’t seek felony murder instead of capital murder, and that his lawyer should have rebutted an alleged shooting in Freestone County that was brought up during the trial as an argument that Threadgill is a danger to society. The implication was that when he fired into the car he didn’t know McDonald was in the back seat, or that he didn’t mean to kill McDonald.

Following the hearing, Threadgill was transported back to Death Row to await his execution date.



Death Row Inmate Deaths


Kenneth Friedman - California





The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Monday that 58-year-old Kenneth Friedman was pronounced dead early Sunday after being found in his cell.

Friedman was sentenced to death in December 2005 after pleading guilty to the murder of two men who were strangled with telephone chords after being abducted from their job at a telecommunications store in Torrance.

The victims were 26-year-old Peter Kovach, a former drug dealer who had fallen out with a gang, and Kovach's co-worker, 29-year-old Ted Gould.

The CDCR said there have been 21 death row suicides since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978.

There are currently 728 condemned inmates in California.




Current Death Row Inmates



Kevin Miles - Arizona


Miles, 44, was convicted of felony murder for his role as an accomplice in the carjacking, robbery and slaying of Patricia Baeuerlen, who was driven into the desert and shot by one of Miles’ two companions.

A divided three-judge panel of the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Miles’ claim that his trial attorney was ineffective during sentencing because she failed to highlight his drug habit and his troubled history growing up in Winslow.

“The mitigating evidence that the court never heard – post-traumatic stress disorder from having been physically abused as a child, with paddles, whips, sticks and fists – the sentencing judge never heard that,” said Assistant Federal Public Defender Tim Gabrielsen.

Those factors “gave Kevin Miles less opportunity to withstand the commands of the more culpable co-defendant who actually performed the shooting,” Gabrielsen said.

Miles was 24 when he and two 16-year-old acquaintances forced their way into Baeuerlen’s car after one of the youths, Levi Jackson, approached, asked for a light and then pointed a .45-caliber handgun at her head.

After Miles and Ray Hernandez got in the car, Jackson drove into a secluded desert area outside of Tucson as Baeuerlen pleaded for her life. He turned onto a dirt road, ordered Baeuerlen to get out and remove her shoes and jacket.

As Baeuerlen complied, Jackson taunted her, and after five to 10 minutes shot her once in the heart, leaving her in the desert. Miles later said he thought she was still alive as they drove away.
Miles drove Baeuerlen’s car to Phoenix later that day, used her ATM card to withdraw money and exchanged her children’s Christmas gifts that were in the car for other goods. The next day Miles met with friends and laughed about the murder over drinks.

He was convicted in 1993 and sentenced to death.



Timothy Mcghee - California





An inmate on California's death row attacked two correctional officers at San Quentin State Prison on Thursday, but both are expected to recover.

Authorities from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Timothy Joseph McGhee, 39, used a weapon he made to slash and stab the officers while they attempted to return him from the shower to his cell. The officers were cut and wounded on their heads, necks and arms and taken to an outside hospital for treatment.

The attack started just before 7 a.m. when the officers opened the shower door in the prison's Adjustment Center. The Adjustment Center is one of three units in the prison where male inmates on California's death row are housed.

McGhee was sentenced to death in Los Angeles County on Jan. 9, 2009, after he was convicted of first-degree murder in the gang-related killings four people from 1997 to 2001. He also was convicted of attempting to murder four other people, including to Los Angeles Police Department officers.



Harold Ray Memro - California


On Thursday, the California Supreme Court denied the latest appeal in the case of a man convicted of murdering three boys in Los Angeles County in the 1970s.

The state's highest court unanimously rejected a petition filed by attorneys for Harold Ray Memro, who legally changed his name to Reno while on death row in December 1994.

Memro was convicted of first-degree murder for the July 1976 slaying of 10-year-old Ralph Chavez Jr. and the October 1978 death of 7-year-old Carl Carter Jr., and second-degree murder for the July 1976 killing of 12-year-old Scott Fowler.

His initial conviction for the slayings was overturned by the California Supreme Court and he was retried and again sentenced to death in 1987.

Chavez and Fowler were found dead near a pond in John Anson Ford Park in Bell Gardens on July 26, 1975. The boys -- who had been fishing at the park -- had their throats slit.



Lucious Boyd - Florida





A convicted rapist and murderer on Death Row returned to a Broward courtroom last week to ask a judge for a new trial.

Lawyers for Lucious Boyd, 53, appeared before Broward Circuit Judge Andrew Siegel to argue that Boyd's attorneys during his 2002 criminal trial failed to properly vet potential jurors and declined to ask for a mistrial after another victim, seated in the gallery, got up and identified Boyd as her rapist.

Boyd was convicted of the murder of Dawnia Dacosta, 21, who disappeared on Dec. 5, 1998 after her car ran out of gas on Interstate 95 in Deerfield Beach. Dacosta, who was returning home from a prayer service, walked to a gas station on Hillsboro Boulevard and was promised a ride back to her car by Boyd, who was driving a church van, according to trial testimony.

Her body was discovered two days later near an Oakland Park trash bin. Prosecutors said she had been raped and stabbed 36 times with a screwdriver.

Boyd's current lawyer, Suzanne Keffer, said two jurors who made it onto the panel that convicted her client had criminal records they failed to properly disclose to attorneys before the trial started. Keffer also said Boyd's original lawyers, Assistant Public Defenders Bill Laswell and Jim Ongley, failed to raise a proper objection during the penalty phase of the trial, when a woman stood up as Boyd was testifying and declared she had been raped by him.

The woman did not go on to testify herself, leaving her courtroom outburst unrebutted, Keffer said.

The jury voted 12-0 to put Boyd to death.

Boyd's previous efforts to get a new trial have been unsuccessful. Boyd, the son of the founder of Boyd funeral homes, is also a suspect in the disappearances of three other women, including ex-girlfriend Patrece Alston, daughter of a Broward Sheriff's deputy.

Boyd was arrested three months after the Dacosta killing. Investigators said they found his DNA under Dacosta's fingernails and in semen on her body.

In court Tuesday and Wednesday, Boyd appeared calm in a red jail jumpsuit. He did not testify.

Family members of Boyd and Dacosta were present both days. Dacosta's mother, Daphne Bowe, took the stand to describe the courtroom outburst at the center of the hearing. She said the rape victim only stood up when Boyd pointed her out to the jury as the source of a semen sample relied on by investigators. "You raped me!" the woman shouted, according to Bowe's account.


Enoch Hall - Florida


The Florida Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for a repeat rapist serving two consecutive life sentences when he killed a corrections officer with a prison-made knife with a machined edge.

Enoch Hall, 40, was sentenced to die Jan 15, 2010, after a jury convicted him of stabbing and strangling Donna Fitzgerald at Tomoka Correctional Institution on June 25, 2008.

Fitzgerald was killed while working at the state prison, supervising a work crew that included Hall, a welder.

She was found in a paint room at the prison, stabbed, strangled, and with blunt force trauma to the head that prosecutor said came from Hall’s punches.

Hall appealed his conviction, questioning whether the death sentence was proportionate, saying the local court made a mistake by allowing his three confessions into evidence; arguing that the medical examiner’s opinion about the sequence in which Fitzgerald received 22 stab wounds, a fractured rib, trauma to her head, collapsed lungs and pierced heart led to a first-degree rather than a second-degree murder conviction.

The state Supreme Court disagreed and upheld Circuit Judge J. David Walsh’s sentence of death. A jury had unanimously recommended the death sentence back in October 2009.


Joseph Paul Franklin - Missori





On Wednesday Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster filed a motion with the state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to delay setting an execution date for a Missouri death row inmate due because of continuing legal challenges.

The inmate, Joseph Franklin, a white supremacist, fired a rifle at worshippers leaving a St. Louis synagogue in October 1977, killing one and injuring two others. At the time, Franklin said he committed the crime because he considered Jews the "enemies of the white race."

Franklin did not confess to this shooting until 1994, when he was serving federal sentences for other crimes.

Joseph Franklin was convicted of murder in this case in 1997 and sentenced to death. Evidence linked Franklin to a pair of double murders, one in Utah and another in Wisconsin. He was also believed to have bombed a synagogue in Tennessee.

Attorney General Koster insists Franklin's lawyers are simply delaying the inevitable by challenging the legality of Missouri's execution procedures, specifically the use of the anesthetic propofol instead of the previous three-drug method. Koster says previous appeals regarding lethal injection have failed and take as many as two years to be resolved.

Missouri executed 66 death row inmates from 1989 through 2005. The state has executed only one inmate since then.


Brian Darrell Davis - Oklahoma


On Wednesday, a federal appeals court rejected an Oklahoma death row inmate's appeal of his first-degree murder conviction and death sentence.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the appeal of 38-year-old Brian Davis, who was convicted of first-degree murder and first-degree rape in the November 2001 death of his girlfriend's mother, 52-year-old Josephine Sanford. A Kay County jury sentenced Davis to death on the murder charge and 100 years on the rape charge.

The victim's daughter, Stacey Sanford, discovered her mother dead in the Ponca City apartment she shared with Davis. Josephine Sanford had six stab wounds, a broken jaw and marks around her neck.

The appeals court rejected Davis' claim that his trial lawyer was ineffective.

His appellate attorney, Jack Fisher, had no immediate comment Wednesday.


William Glenn Rogers - Tennessee


On Friday, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the ruling of Judge John H. Gasaway, who denied post conviction relief for convicted murderer and death row inmate William Glenn Rogers.

Rogers, 50, was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, two counts of first-degree murder, especially aggravated kidnapping, rape of a child and two counts of criminal impersonation for the brutal murder of nine-year-old Jacqueline “Jackie” Beard.

On July 8, 1996, Jackie was last seen picking blackberries in her Potters Lane yard. Four months later, Jackie’s body was found by hunters at Land Between the Lakes in Stewart County.

Rogers was arrested three days after her disappearance and charged with her murder. He was sentenced to death.

He has filed numerous appeals since his conviction in 2000 and had several stays of execution.


Robert Garza - Texas





A South Texas street gang member sent to death row for the fatal shooting of four women 10 years ago lost a federal court appeal.

The ruling Monday from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals moves 30-year-old Robert Garza a step closer to execution.

Evidence showed he fired at least 50 bullets into a car, killing the women who were illegal immigrants from Mexico working at a bar in Donna, a border town southeast of Edinburg. Garza was identified as belonging to the Tri-City Bombers and was carrying out a gang-ordered hit on women who had testified against a gang member. Evidence also showed the hit was botched and the victims weren't involved in the other case.

Garza's appeal contended he had deficient legal help at his trial



Jury Recommended Death Sentences


Derek Tyler Horton - Alabama



Reversed/ New Trials/ Resentenced/ Released/ Commuted



Angela Johnson - Federal


Lawyers for an Iowa woman facing a second death penalty trial for her role in the execution-style killings of 5 people in 1993 are planning to challenge the process used to select jurors.

Angela Johnson's attorneys on Friday asked for years of data to analyze the racial and gender makeup of grand juries and trial juries in the federal district that covers the northern half of Iowa.

They say the selection system may cause minorities to be underrepresented because of how officials create the juror pool. They also say women may face discrimination in the selection of jury forepersons.

Johnson is set to go on trial next year to determine whether she will be sent back to federal death row. A judge threw out her 2005 death sentence in March.


Anthony Pierce - Texas





After three convictions and death sentences, all of which were at least partially overturned on appeal, the Harris County District Attorney's Office plans to drop efforts to execute Anthony Pierce, who has been on death row since 1978.

"I expect he will get a life sentence," Assistant District Attorney Lance Long said of a hearing set for Thursday in state District Judge Denise Collins' court.

That sentence would be applied under state laws in force at the time of Pierce's August 1977 murder of fried chicken restaurant manger Fred Johnson, 40, meaning that he could be eligible for parole consideration.

"I'm not going to discuss what's taking place before the pardons and parole board," Long said Wednesday, adding that he also would not explain why prosecutors have decided not to seek execution.

Pierce, 53, who has spent more time on death row than all but two of its current residents, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death on three occasions, most recently in 1986.

Appeals courts tossed the first two convictions because of jury selection problems. Two years ago, a three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit threw out the last trial's punishment phase because jurors were kept from hearing mitigating evidence as required by law.

A new punishment phase was set for Collins' court on Sept. 10.

Pierce's attorney, Robert K. Loper, hailed the decision to drop efforts to execute his client, noting that the one-time Houston laborer consistently has proclaimed his innocence. Loper said seating a jury for a new punishment trial likely would have taken about three weeks, and prosecutors would have had to present evidence regarding the crime.

Former Houston Police Detective Johnny Bonds, though, decried the decision to not seek execution, saying that Pierce is a violent man who "will kill again."

"He's an animal," Bonds said.

Bonds, who investigated the Aug. 4, 1977, murder at the Church's Fried Chicken restaurant at 7423 Cullen Blvd., said Pierce had "a long string of juvenile offenses," including a robbery at the same restaurant.

As Johnson held his hands up during the robbery, Pierce told the restaurant manager, "I've been meaning to kill you for a long time," and fired a fatal shot, Bonds said. "It wasn't even the same man," the former detective said.

Pierce also has been convicted of manslaughter for fatally stabbing a fellow inmate in 1979. Killed in the attack was 37-year-old Edward King, who had been condemned for killing a Dallas police officer.


Justin Wolfe - Virginia


The Virginia attorney general's office has eliminated one of its two options for appealing a court's decision vacating a death row inmate's conviction and sentence.

Justin Wolfe was convicted of hiring someone to kill his marijuana supplier in 2001. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Aug. 16 that Wolfe's conviction should be vacated and he should be freed from prison because prosecutors withheld evidence that would have discredited their key witness — the triggerman who testified against Wolfe, but later recanted.

Thursday was the deadline if the attorney general's office wanted to appeal the panel's decision to the full federal appeals court. Brian Gottstein, a spokesman for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, said that option was ruled out.

However, he said no decision has been made on whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The deadline for that is mid-November.

The state also could accept the panel's decision and either let Wolfe go free or retry him.

Wolfe's attorney, Ashley Parrish, said he was pleased with the decision not to seek a rehearing in the appeals court.

"We hope it's an indication they don't intend to seek further review from the Supreme Court and will reach the right decision of letting Justin Wolfe go home to his family," Parrish said.

Wolfe remains on death row while state officials consider their options.






Guilty Verdicts


Floyd Casey - Alabama
David Anthony - Arizona
Michael Carlson - Arizona
Pablo Maldonado - Georgia




New Death Sentences


Robert McCloud - Florida

On Friday morning a judge ordered that Robert McCloud should be executed for taking part in a brutal home invasion robbery in Poinciana where two witnesses were killed.

Circuit Judge Donald Jacobsen agreed with a jury's recommendation that the 31-year-old Apopka man be put to death for his crimes.

McCloud was given two death sentences for his convictions on two counts of first-degree murder.

He also received three life sentences for charges of attempted first-degree murder, armed burglary and armed robbery. He was given a five-year prison sentence for conspiracy to commit burglary.


Melvin Knight - Pennsylvania





A man who pleaded guilty to murder in the torture-killing of a mentally disabled woman was sentenced to death.

A Westmoreland County jury announced its verdict Thursday evening against 22-year-old Melvin Knight.

A prosecutor had said Knight deserved the death penalty because his crimes were heinous and depraved. A defense attorney had argued Knight's relatively young age and his lack of a prior criminal record were reasons the jury should give him life in prison.

Pennsylvania has executed only three people since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976. All of them chose to end their appeals. The last person executed was a man who murdered two women. He was executed in 1999.

The closing arguments by defense attorney Jeffrey Miller Miller and Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck came earlier Thursday in the death penalty trial of Knight, who had pleaded guilty to murder in the February 2010 killing of 30-year-old Jennifer Daugherty. The jury, which deliberated two hours, had to decide whether he would get the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Peck contended Knight deserved to be executed by lethal injection because he raped and helped torture Daugherty.


Tyrone Cade - Texas




A Dallas County jury on Wednesday decided on the death penalty for 39-year-old Tyrone Cade of Irving. Jurors last week rejected an insanity defense and convicted Cade of capital murder in the 2011 attack.

The victims were 37-year-old Mischell Fuller and Desaree Hoskins.

Investigators say Cade on March 27, 2011, walked into a police station and confessed to killing the women. Officers went to Cade’s home and located the bodies.

Authorities say Fuller and Cade had argued over a conversation she allegedly had with her ex-husband.